Online consumers may use a search engine to give them a myriad of choices in a desired service or a product. However, there are times a consumer may need services or goods in an emergency such as when a child has a front tooth knocked out or a furnace needs repairing on a cold winter's night. In these instances and more, consumers want to quickly connect with a trusted and proven provider in their city or immediate area and don't have the time or the desire to sift through a long list of search engine hits to find what they need.
Furthermore, when a consumer is in urgent need of a dentist's services and enters ‘dentist’ in a search engine prompt, generic and long reserved domain names such as ‘dentists.com’ or the like may be returned at the top of the search according to search engine metrics and advertising agreements. However, more often than not, such sites offer services in a different geographical location than the consumer's city, county, or even state. Even though some referring websites offer vendors in geographic areas, lists of service providers still require time and effort from the consumer to narrow down available services to a single desired provider.
One type of consumer information source that is increasingly popular is the referring service based on a general geographic location entered by the user at a referring website. This may provide an internet consumer with an online directory of service providers in the consumer's general geographic location and may even include a service provider's name, phone number and address. However, the consumer still has to sift through a directory list of providers and place phone calls to several providers on the list to find the ‘right one.’
Referring websites with online directories of service providers are not always reliable since a webmaster is required to keep the directories up to date. Still other referring websites may even allow the consumer to fill out forms online for an appointment to be scheduled with a service provider of choice. However, none of these online referrals provide the online consumer with a quick, convenient and reliable means of finding a proven service provider in a specific geographical location at any time of the day from any location with access to the internet.